Scratch coding

Scratch can be accessed from scratch.mit.edu.
What is Scratch? A very popular drag and drop programming environment that is suitable for children 8 and up. There is an education specific site for Scratch at http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/

Some years back the ScratchEd team also published a curriculum draft with twenty 60 minute lessons.

Want to get started with some simple Scratch projects? Here are some tutorials.

• Tim Telep's series of YouTube videos including "Create an animation", "Build a maze game", "Make a multi-level game"
• These very comprehensive Scratch activity cards look like a great way to introduce students to Scratch coding
• A pretty dense powerpoint guides this interesting tutorial to draw multi-coloured flower
• Build a multiplication game and race the characters (described as suitable for grades 3-5)
• How to find the top 5 bugs in Scratch coding
• Write your name using coordinates
• This set of 15 Scratch challenges could be useful if you are still able to play Flash movies...
• 15 lessons on creating a Scratch game
• This Animated Biome Project has been used many times at grade 3 and has several examples so you can see the finished product
• I haven't looked through them closely yet but this site with Scratch lesson plans looks interesting
• Some Scratch related resources on the ABC Splash website

More Advanced...

• A fascinating page on doing robotics with inexpensive platforms using Arduino and Scratch

Other interesting Scratch resources

• Linking Scratch to a Raspberry Pi to control electronics - try this guide at sean.co.uk